Thoughts on Modern Learning Experiences

This is MadeMeThink – A Weekly Publication with Curated Content for Visionaries, Innovators & Critical Thinkers Exploring the World of Tomorrow. Written by Thomas Metzler

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In this week's article, I reflect on a new blended learning course on Digital Business Models that I developed at our university. If you are also interested in new learning experiences or want to introduce new learning experiences in your organisation, feel free to get in touch with me on LinkedIn.

Digital Business Models: A Blended Learning Experience

Over the past few years, I've often thought about what modern learning experiences might look like, especially with the widespread availability of AI chatbots. What role will universities play in the future? What should a modern course look like that offers added value compared to specialized AI chatbots, which provide 24/7 personalized learning assistance and have absorbed the wisdom of the world?

When my university (FHV - Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences) launched a pilot project for new blended learning experiences, I volunteered to take part with my course on digital business models; a short course with 15 teaching units in the Master's program in Business Administration. The university gave me complete freedom to redesign the course, with the aim that it should be more than just transferring a traditional on-site lecture to a virtual video call (or recorded) lecture. This appealed to me because, in my opinion, virtual lectures are not the solution...

I have been in education for quite a long time and every year or so, a disruption of the university landscape is predicted. I still remember when everyone thought Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and purely digital learning experiences were the future. Back then, MOOCs didn't achieve massive success, and years later, after several purely digital university semesters during the COVID lockdowns, it became clear that fully digital study programs are not the ideal solution either (1). At a conference I attended last year, Matthew Sanders (Education and VR Director at Meta) had a slide with the phases of an Ed Tech Hype (Hope → Hype → Disapointment). But why does tech innovation in the education sector usually end in disappointment?

In my opinion, one of the reasons why universities are hard to disrupt is that a university offers more to students than just the mere transfer of knowledge. For many students, university is the first time they move to a new place as part of their degree programme or for a semester abroad. The university is a meeting place where a wide variety of people from different backgrounds come together and critically discuss content, do research, challenge the status quo and think up new solutions. Many well-known start-up teams have met at the university.

• Founders of Google/ Alphabet: Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University.
• Founders of Facebook/ Meta: Marc Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes met while they were students at Harvard University, starting Facebook from their dorm room.
• Founders of Dropbox: Drew Houston & Arash Ferdowsi met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-founded Dropbox while still studying.
• Founders of Reddit: Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian were roommates while studying at the University of Virginia.

A modern learning experience must therefore provide more than just content transfer through traditional lectures. Therefore I thought about what modern learning experiences could look like today. I asked myself how I can offer added value in my course that goes beyond teaching classic domain knowledge, especially when a specialized AI with access to extensive field knowledge could likely outperform most of us. So I threw all my old school content course slides in the bin (a painful process because they were really good) and opted for a blended learning approach. A blended learning approach combines face-to-face on-site sessions with digital learning experiences.

In the run-up to the course, I thought about how I could create a learning experience that students would enjoy attending, that would be fun, that would spark curiosity, but would also teach the essential content. I have come up with the following guiding principles on which I have built my new (modern) learning experience:

Guiding Principle 1: Learning experiences should encourage exchange between students and beyond.

As briefly described above, actual encounters and the exchange of ideas play an important role in the value proposition of a university. Students engage in dialogue with each other and with lecturers, guest speakers, etc. It was important to me to encourage this exchange as much as possible. I chose several approaches to do this. For example, students should think out of the box, come up with new business models and post them on our online learning forum in order to receive peer feedback from their fellow students. I was amazed at how good the quality of the contributions and the peer feedback was (read more here).

However, it was also important to me that students come into contact with startup founders who are currently working on digital business models. To this end, I initiated an on-site exchange of ideas with the founders of Workenda, Vlow and Gleap, in which the students were able to pick the founders' brains with their questions in rotating small groups. In addition to the valuable personal learnings the founders shared, the students now have contacts in the startup scene on which they can draw on in the future when they realise their own idea.

Two students actually even approached me after a class session and pitched me an interesting business idea that they came up with and now want to pursue. Maybe these two will soon be an entry in my list of founders who met at university ????

Guiding Principle 2: Learning experiences should be fun.

Learning should be fun. The content should be pleasant and easy to absorb. That's why I often created memes for my content pieces, such as the one above in this article.

We had three on-site sessions in this course in which I no longer wanted to give traditional lectures. So I had to experiment with other approaches. In one of these on-site sessions, my aim was to get students curious about new technologies, as these often form the basis for new business models. Therefore we ordered some pizza and watched the movie "Ready Player One". I assigned different groups specific tasks to focus on while watching the movie.For example, some groups analyzed the new business models depicted in the movie, while others identified the challenges and ethical concerns associated with these models. After the movie, we discussed the students' observations. The evening was certainly fun.

Guiding Principle 3: Content learnt should also be applied.

I am a professor at an University of Applied Sciences. In this respect, I wanted the students to have some creative, hands-on experiences on Business Model Innovation. Theory is important, but the learning experience is richer when a combination of theory and practice takes place (see also my article on Think-Act-Feel or Thinking vs. Doing).

Therefore, in one of the on-site course session, I aimed to engage the students more creatively by having them actually build something. They were tasked with identifying a problem and developing a digital business model to solve it. Usually when we do something like that, we work digitally by creating landing pages and virtual mock-ups, but for this session, I wanted the students to build a representation of their business models using materials such as Lego and modeling clay. This led to funny models (see below) and a very productive discussion when the physical representations of the business models were presented (I also teach courses at our university in which students actually turn business models into reality, but with 15 teaching units that would probably be asking a bit too much, hence the playful, creative approach).

Guiding Principle 4: Learning content should take into account different levels of knowledge and different learning preferences

Especially at Master's level, it is often difficult to equalise different levels of knowledge. Students have different prerequisites; someone who attended a specialisation in Entrepreneurship & Innovation at Bachelor's level knows the theory of digital business models much better than someone who specialised in Human Resources. This heterogeneity of prior knowledge is a challenge for lecturers. With traditional courses, it is difficult to avoid repetition for some students. With the asynchronous blended learning approach that this course follows, it is possible. Asynchronous here means that parts of the course content are studied at home. I have incorporated the content that I otherwise had on the slides into the articles below:

• Digital Business Models: An Introduction
• Why Business Models Matter
• Tech-Driven Business Model Innovation
• “New” Business Models
• Lifelong Learning (on Business Models)
• Digital Business Models: Coruse-Outro

After taking a course on digital business models, every student should at least have heard of such classics as Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas. However, many are already familiar with the model. With the chosen asynchronous approach, those who are already familiar with the model can simply skip the content while others read through it. The course evaluation revealed an interesting result in this regard, suggesting that this approach may have worked, as there was a significant difference in the average workload required to complete this course. It seems that there were two camps: Those who got through with quite little effort (possibly those with prior knowledge in this field) and those who had to put quite a lot of effort into the course (possibly those who were new to the topic). Or maybe I'm just being too optimistic and the figure only shows the distribution of lazy and motivated students ????

The chosen self-learning approach also offers opportunities to cater for different learning preferences. In my articles, I've offered books, podcasts or videos to explore the topics in more depth, so everyone can choose their favourite learning medium. Students can of course also learn via ChatGPT & Co, it doesn't matter. The only important thing is that they can absorb, understand and apply the content.

Guiding Principle 5: Student assessment should not be an end in itself, but should offer added value.

Since my article is already getting quite lengthy, I'll address this point briefly. I aim to eliminate traditional exams from my courses as much as possible, as they are only marginally beneficial to the learning experience and do not reflect the natural application of acquired knowledge. Students rightly question why they should memorize tons of content when all the information they need is accessible via their smartphones.

Assignments in a modern learning experience, especially in business studies, should bridge the gap between theory and practice, encourage critical thinking, trigger discussion, spark imagination and so on. It should be fun or at least interesting to work on them. The student should finish the assessment with the conclusion that it has been useful.

Guiding Principle 6: Learning experiences should be tailored to individual interests & spark curiosity.

The most important goal of ALL my courses is to arouse curiosity for a topic, to spark the flame. This is one of the best methods for establishing lasting learning experiences and is therefore very important to me. Curiosity and interest is the starting point for many paths in life.

?Motivation begins with interest. Neuroscientists now regard interest as a fundamental human emotion and, perhaps, a child’s first emotion – an emotion that guides our engagement in the world. Interest leads to exploration and to the development of projects. Projects then become ambitions and goals.“ - Barish (2014) (2)

However, interests are highly heterogeneous. Which industries, technologies or business models are of interest to someone varies greatly. Therefore, in this course (and in many of my other courses), I leave it largely open which topics the students deal with in regard to digital business models. And the asynchronous approach in particular leaves a lot of room for manoeuvre here. In one of my articles, for example, I write about how new technologies influence business models. The students should then dedicate themselves to this topic. However, which technologies they explore and which resources they use is up to them. They can follow their interests.

Furthermore, I always provide students with numerous podcasts, vlogs, newsletters, etc. in the subject area so that they can continue their learning experience after the course and to stay up to date.

Conclusion

Blended learning combines on-site meetups with self-directed learning and, for me, represents a promising approach to modern learning experiences. It allows the flexibility and accessibility of digital learning while maintaining the interactive and collaborative aspects of a university education. Students can get the best of both worlds: the convenience of online learning at their own pace while having on-site meetups to critically discuss and co-create solutions, strengthening their relationships with peers.

My goal for this course was to create a compelling modern learning experience that students would attend even if it wasn't mandatory. And that seems to have worked. At least that's what the anonymous online evaluation of the course indicates, in which all students responded that they would also attend the course if they did not have to (see below) ????

If you are also interested in new learning experiences or want to introduce new learning experiences in your organisation, feel free to get in touch with me on LinkedIn.

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Disclaimer: The thoughts published in this publication are my personal opinion and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation for any type of action. I am not a financial expert. The startups, organizations or corporates highlighted in this publication have caught my interest. This mention is not an endorsement or recommendation to engage with them. Readers should always do their own research.

(1) Nevertheless, I have to recognize the advantages of digital learning experiences. There are incredibly good digital learning opportunities out there, and I often learn through digital tools or courses myself. For specific, targeted learning experiences on selected topics, digital methods can be excellent. But for longer learning experiences, spanning two to three years like in a Bachelors or Masters program, universities can still offer significant added value (IMHO).

(2) Barish, K. (2014). How Can We Help Our Children Become “Grittier”?https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pride-and-joy/201401/how-can-we-help-our-children-become-grittier